


Syntax

by Gin_Juice



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Family Dinners, Family Dynamics, Grace Hargreeves has never done anything wrong, I know this and I love her, One Shot Collection, Pre-Canon, Robot Feels, Robot/Human Relationships, but boy do i hate it, ever in her life, hints of luther/allison because it's canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2019-11-12 13:59:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 18,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18012263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gin_Juice/pseuds/Gin_Juice
Summary: Being a good parent is hard.Being a good parent when you're a robot is harder.Being a good parent when you're a robot built by a man who hates children is a constant uphill battle, but Grace does her best.OR; How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Just Be a Good Mom





	1. you which could grin three smiles into a dead house

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't been in fandom in years, but I watched The Umbrella Academy, and then... 
> 
> I really liked Grace, and I couldn't help wondering how much worse off the kids would have been without her. So, I decided to write some vignettes about her and her relationships with the children. Mostly fluffy stuff, but there's always some fucked up shit going on in the background because, you know. I'll add relevant warnings before individual chapters. (Also, the titles are all going to be from e.e. cummings poems.)
> 
> Hope you enjoy it!

Sir Reginald Hargreeves—industrialist, inventor, winner of Olympic Gold medals—had created Grace to be the perfect mother.

She was programmed with eight distinct smiles and twenty-two unique gestures of affection. She was as knowledgeable about a child’s health and development as any pediatrician. Each day, she provided her wards with three square meals, a clean living environment, and exactly two instances of positive reinforcement. She would never lose her temper, and she would never play favorites, and she would never argue with the children’s father in front of them (or behind their backs, or in her own private thoughts).

Grace knew so much about being a mother that even she, with her microchip brain and electronic heart, was aware that a robot could never replace the real thing.

But, she was cheerful and industrious by design, and there was always work to be done. And she did try to do the work well. She pushed her programming to its limits in that pursuit.

The children were seven years old, and Sir Reginald was away in Sweden for two weeks, and Klaus came to the dinner table barefoot.

She was just finishing up the broccoli, but she heard Ben’s urgent whisper behind her. “Klaus! Klaus, your _shoes_!”

“She can’t see,” Klaus whispered back, a little bit too loud for subtlety, as per usual.

“She’ll see when you get up,” Five murmured. There was a rustle of paper, as he turned a page in the book he was reading. “You’re dumb.”

“After we eat, say that you have to go pee really bad,” Ben said, in a tone of barely suppressed panic. “And then you can go upstairs and get them.”

Grace turned off the burner and began parceling everyone’s food onto plates.

“I…can’t,” Klaus said with a hint of reluctance. Then, “I threw them out the window.”

A delicate giggle overlapped a muffled gasp.

“You’re gonna get in troooou- ble!” Allison sang, sotto voce.

“I don’t really caaaa-aaare,” Klaus shot back, mimicking her, but much louder.

“You have to get your shoes back!” Diego hissed. “T-tomorrow is ice cream day, and we already didn’t get ice cream last m-m-month—“

“That was your fault,” Five reminded him.

“—and I c-c-can’t w-w-w…” There was a disgruntled huff and a soft thud, as though someone had kicked the table. Or perhaps a sibling.

After all this time, they still hadn’t learned to be quiet enough to go undetected by her enhanced hearing. Grace smiled to herself. She strongly suspected this fact was humorous.

“I’m sorry,” Klaus said miserably. “It’s so hot! They make my feet sweaty.”

“You know what’s good when it’s hot out?” asked Five.

“A fan,” Luther guessed.

There was another thud, and this one was definitely a child being kicked.

“Don’t fight,” Vanya’s soft voice implored. “We won’t get ice cream if you fight.”

“Strawberry,” Ben said wistfully.

Grace put the last plate on the serving tray and made her way over to the table. No one spoke as she handed out their dinner.

“Eat up now children!” She cast them all her biggest, most beaming smile.

“Mom,” Klaus said suddenly. “Mom, I forgot my shoes.”

Ben looked at him wide-eyed, and Vanya leaned forward so that her hair covered her face.

“Um… Can I go get them? Before we eat?”

At night, when all the children were in bed and the day’s work was completed, Grace liked to sit by the paintings in the second floor hallway and think. A human might have dwelt on philosophical questions, but she was not a human, and considering the whys and wherefores of her own small world was enough.

Sir Reginald insisted upon a great many rules. Most of them, she had determined, were logical. If the children touched the stove, they might burn themselves. If the children were allowed toys in their rooms, they might play with them instead of studying. She had found that some of the rules, however, served no function at all; they were simply Sir Reginald’s preference.

It stood to reason, then, that they did not need to be enforced when he wasn’t at home. One of her directives—a lesser directive, true, but a valid one—was to see to the children’s happiness, and what child could be happy with sweaty feet and no ice cream?

“Dinner is from 5:45 to 6:15,” she said. “Nutrition is very important.”

It wasn’t defiance. It was simply following her programming.

Klaus’s anxious little face twisted into an ‘O’ of surprise. “So, I… I should just eat, then?”

Grace gave him her smile of gentle encouragement. “Of course, silly. Dinner is from 5:45 to 6:15.”

The rest of the children were watching them, fascinated.

“Can I take _my_ shoes off?” Allison asked.

Grace did her stop-being-silly laugh, which was her most favorite one. “You children are old enough to dress yourselves,” she said.

Allison studied her for a moment, then slowly brought her foot up to rest on the chair and began undoing her laces.

Grace gave her a nod and returned to the stove, humming tunelessly as she wiped it clean.

It was an ordinary night, in every other respect. Dinner continued in silence, interrupted only by the occasional scrape of a fork against a plate or a slurp of water. She herded the children into the study to listen to the evening news on the radio at 6:30. At 7, they all got into bed. It was a weekend, so they had the option of staying up to read for a while, but they were all asleep before the 8:30 lights out.

The only thing that stood out was the sound of six pairs of bare feet – Number Five, ever the voice of dissent, had kept on his socks—slapping on the hardwood as they trudged through the house. Pogo, though he had to have noticed the children’s lack of shoes, made no comment.

Grace finished the laundry and retreated to her seat in the hallway. The painting of the French Riviera seemed especially lovely that night, and she lost herself in the blues of the water, the pinks of the flowers. What would the sand feel like on all those wriggling little toes, she wondered?

She slipped her own shoes off, and pressed them to the cool marble, and tried to imagine.


	2. the moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Grace has to reconcile her programming with the fact that Diego is a complete and total Mama's boy.

“What’s laudanum?” Klaus asked sleepily.

“It’s medicine,” Five mumbled without opening his eyes.

“What’s it for?”

Five shrugged against Grace’s shoulder. “Everything. Everyone takes laudanum, in old books.”

“Oh. Do we have any?”

The children were eight years old, and Sir Reginald was asleep, and Grace was reading _Moby-Dick_ to Five and Klaus at one in the morning because they both kept waking up coughing.

The two of them had caught a nasty chest cold earlier in the week, and thus were being quarantined from their siblings. Klaus couldn’t tolerate being left alone all day, and Five could just barely tolerate his constant company, so Grace had been spending much of her time keeping the peace between the two.

“No talking, now,” she murmured, carding her fingers through Klaus’s curls. “Listen to the story and try to sleep.”

“I know how it ends,” Five informed her. “I read this book already. Two times.”

“Why?” asked Klaus. “It’s even more boring than you are.”

“Shhhh.”

“You’re probably going to go back in time and write it yourself when we grow up.”

“That’s enough, now.” Grace raised the book and took up where she’d left off. Klaus was asleep before the end of the page. Five took a little longer, reluctant to let even his own body force him into doing something he hadn’t suggested first, but a few pages in, he, too, drifted off.

Grace stopped reading mid-sentence when she heard his breathing even out. She examined the tops of their heads with fondness.

_‘My children are such angels… when they’re asleep.’_

She’d seen that on a cross-stitch, a reader submission to a housekeeping magazine Sir Reginald let her have for the recipes. She had looked at it for hours one night in admiration. What would humans come up with next?

From the hallway came the soft sound of approaching footsteps. The door creaked open, and Diego’s face peeked inside.

“Mom?” he whispered.

She held a finger to her lips, then pointed at Five. “What is it, dear?”

“I just w-wanted to see what you guys w-w-were doing.”

“Your brothers are sleeping,” she said softly. “And so should you be.”

He leaned into the room, gripping the doorknob tight. “C-can I sleep in here?”

She smiled and inclined her head towards him. “I’m afraid not, dear. Your father would be very upset if you got sick.”

“Oh,” he said softly. He released the doorknob and took a step backwards, studying the three of them on the bed with a look of resignation. “I’ll s-see you in the m-m-morning then.”

“Good night, Diego. Sleep tight.”

{}{}{}{}{}

The following afternoon, Grace stood in the kitchen making a pie, while Allison and Vanya assisted by getting flour everywhere.

Sir Reginald limited how often the children got desserts, but it was a big day. The German Chancellor had called to tell him they would be receiving a special award, for their help in thwarting a terrorist attack several weeks prior. It was a momentous occasion, and everyone was very excited.  The children simply _adored_ pie.

“I’m going to make this every day when I grow up,” Allison declared, kneading at the dough. “I’m going to make apple pie, and cherry pie, and blueberry pie—“

“Pecan?” Vanya suggested.

Allison scrunched up her nose. “Maybe sometimes. I’ll make pecan when you come over.”

Vanya glanced up at her, startled. “What do you mean? We live in the same house.”

“We won’t always live here, though,” Allison said. Her curls were bouncing merrily with each enthusiastic press of the dough. “I’m going to get married and have a lot of kids and we’ll have our own house. But you guys can still come visit whenever you want.”

Vanya didn’t respond. She rolled her own dough around the table slowly until it formed a ball, looking thoughtful.

“What are you guys doing?”

Diego stood next to the refrigerator, toying with one of his knives.

“Go away!” Allison commanded. “Girls only!”

He marched forward, undaunted. “Are you m-making the pie? I can help.”

“No you can’t!” She whirled to the counter, where Grace was measuring out spices. “Tell him to leave, Mom!”

Diego crossed his arms and fixed her with a look of challenge. “I c-can help c-cut the apples,” he said stubbornly. “I’m the b-best at helping c-cook, isn’t that r-r-right, Mom?”

Vanya hunched her shoulders and focused very intently on her ball of dough.

Grace tittered delicately, which was her laugh that was meant to dispel tense situations. “My, I have so many enthusiastic little helpers today!” She put her hands on her hips and donned her ‘playful scolding’ expression. She used that one sparingly, because one time Ben had thought she was genuinely angry at him and started crying. “Where are you all when it’s time to do the dishes?”

“I c-can do the d-d-dishes!”

Grace tittered again. “I think you should go practice with your knives,” she said, bending at the waist so they were at eye-level. She gave him a tap on the nose. “Like your father said to do.”

Diego’s face flushed with frustration and he clenched his jaw. “I d-don’t w-want to! I w-want to st-stay here!”

“Now, now,” she chided. “We don’t want to upset your father, do we?”

His anger melted to bitterness, and his gaze dropped to the floor. “No,” he muttered.

“Very good. Run along now, Diego.”

{}{}{}{}{}

That evening, as the children were getting ready to sleep, Grace paused in Luther’s open doorway. “Good night, dear.”

“Night, mom.” He was sitting cross-legged on his bed, putting the finishing touches on a model rocket. Sir Reginald had given him permission to keep it in his room, since it was a work in progress. He held it up. “It’s almost ready. Want to see?”

Grace slipped inside and perched on the foot of the bed. “It’s very nice, Luther. So colorful!”

His face suffused with pride. “Yeah, I took the paint from my airplane kit and used it on this one, and then I’m going to use the paint from this kit on my other airplane, and then—“

“Is that the new rocket?”

Diego stood in the doorway.

Luther’s expression turned guarded. He held the rocket close to his chest. “You can’t play with it. It’s not a toy, it’s a _model_.”

“I just w-want to see.” Diego took a few steps towards the bed.

“You can’t,” Luther told him irritably. “It’s not done yet. I was only showing Mom.”

“And m-me.” He crawled onto the bed next to Grace and rested his head on her shoulder. “Sh-show me, too.”

“No! Get out of my room.”

“Boys—“

Diego kicked Luther’s knee and scowled. “I just w-want to see the st-stupid rocket! You’re being a b-buttface.”

Grace fixed Diego with her stern-but-fair look. “Don’t call your siblings names, Diego. You know better than that.”

Diego looked up at her, his mouth twisting in consternation.

“But I j-just w-w-wanted t-t…“ He trailed off with a grimace, as though the words stuck in his throat tasted bitter.

“Tell Luther that you’re sorry, and then time for bed.”

Luther raised his eyebrows expectantly.

Diego looked from Grace, to him, and back to Grace. No sooner had hurt begun to simmer in his eyes than it burst forth, as though the emotion was too much for his small body to contain.

“I HATE YOU!” he shouted. Not at his brother—at her.

Luther gasped, and before Grace could decide what to do next, Diego had scrambled off the bed and out of the room. A door slammed seconds later.

“He said he hates you,” Luther marveled. “He can’t _say_ that.”

Grace smiled at him. “I’m going to go tuck in your brother. Five more minutes, and then bed, alright?”

Luther nodded, still agog. She leaned forward and kissed his forehead.

“Do you want me to beat him up?” he called after her.

“No thank you, dear.”

{}{}{}{}{}

Diego lay on his side with his back to the door, and he didn’t look up when Grace entered the room.

She crossed over to the bed and sat. Stroked a gentle hand down his back.

“Diego,” she said in her most gentle voice. “Is something wrong?”

He shrugged, a sharp twist of his thin shoulders.

“You shouldn’t call your brother names,” she said, not changing her tone modulation. “You know that.”

“L-luther _is_ a b-b-b…” He punched his pillow with a muffled cry of frustration.

Without warning, he slung himself from the bed to the chair at his desk, and began to write. After long seconds of furious scribbling, he paused, pen hovering over the paper. With all the decisiveness of a knife to the heart, he jotted down one final thought, then crumpled the note and threw it at Grace.

She retrieved it from the floor, and smoothed it out.

_Luther is a buttface and he’s your favorite and you like everyone more than me_

_you never want me around and you just pretend you like me ~~becase~~ because dad said you have to_

_GO AWAY!!!_

Grace studied the childish scrawl, and thought.

Her children were so different from her. She was programmed to be predictable. She gave certain responses and performed specific tasks, smiled and laughed and deployed her affectionate gestures at key moments. As though she was laid out on a grid. And she knew that human children didn’t function like she did, but the most confusing and wonderful thing about them was, they didn’t quite function like each other, either.

Allison was always laughing, and Vanya was always quiet. Klaus cowered when Sir Reginald got angry, and Five would sneer back at him. After a mission, Luther would be animated and happy, and Ben would wet the bed that night.

And Diego… well, whenever Diego saw one of his siblings embrace her, he would hug her, too, and for twice as long.

She could not show preference to any one child—Sir Reginald was very clear about that, had written it deep into who and what she was. But, perhaps, since the children didn't think or act or feel all the same, they shouldn’t be treated as though they did. ‘Different’ wasn’t synonymous with ‘worse’ or ‘better.’ 

After all, she didn’t sharpen the coffee pot the way she did her chef’s knife, and that certainly didn’t leave the coffee pot at a disadvantage.

“Diego,” she said, “what type of fruit should I serve tomorrow at breakfast?”

He was sitting at his desk with his head in his arms, and he raised it now to look at her, red-rimmed eyes blinking in confusion. “W-what?”

She crossed her ankles and made her thoughtful face. “We have bananas, and strawberries, and cantaloupe. So many options! I can’t think of what to choose.”

“…Banana?” he guessed, watching her like he was waiting to see if that was the correct answer.

She nodded. “Yes, very good.” She smiled at him. “I can't choose. There are so many options, you see.”

He wiped a hand across his nose and turned around fully. “After bananas, w-we can have strawberries,” he suggested.

Grace beamed at him. “Strawberries! That’s an excellent choice. I can never choose. There are too many options.”

He bit the inside of his cheek. “I can pick for you. Every day,” he offered hesitantly. “I’m good at p-picking what fruit.”

“Why, that’s a wonderful idea, Diego! You’re such a good helper. Thank you.”

A tentative smile flickered across his face. “You’re welcome.” His gaze fell to his lap. “I’m… I’ll go to bed now, I g-guess.”

Grace tucked him in and kissed him on his forehead. When she tried to lean back, he suddenly threw his arms around her neck and pressed his face into her shoulder.

“I d-d-didn’t mean it, Mom!” He pulled away and looked into her eyes intently. “I d-didn’t m-m- _mean_ it.”

Grace laughed her don’t-be-silly laugh. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, dear.”

She pressed a second kiss to his forehead, and tried to memorize the weight of him in her arms.

{}{}{}{}{}

She didn’t look at the paintings that night. She sat on the bench in the hallway flipping through one of her housekeeping magazines instead, inspecting the cross-stitch patterns.

She wondered if Sir Reginald would secure her the supplies to make one of her own, if she asked. She wasn’t programmed to have an interest in such things, but it seemed like an inoffensive pastime. Something a human mother might do.

Something she might do, simply because she wanted to.

Something different.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Does anyone else who writes TUA fic keep writing 'Deigo' instead of 'Diego' when they type too fast? I'm just trying to write a cute little story about family, and I proofread it to find it's littered with ethnic slurs. I can feel Mavis Beacon's disappointment from here.


	3. far from a grown-up i&you-ful world

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grace likes Ben. He's cute and easy to love.

Sir Reginald was determined to keep the children as insulated from popular culture as Benedictine nuns, but things still slipped through the cracks.

Allison somehow knew all the songs from _The Little Mermaid_. Five stole the Arts and Culture section of the newspaper for the movie reviews every Sunday.  Vanya could play a few violin covers of Top 40 music, and Klaus had a ‘Disney’s Rapunzel’ Barbie that a fan had sent Allison stashed somewhere in his room, and Diego sought inspiration from various fictional superheroes he admired. Luther, who never broke rules, had gotten caught watching Saturday morning cartoons on the small television in Pogo’s laboratory more than once.

So long as they weren’t distracted from their studies or training, Grace didn’t see that there were any detrimental effects. Well, Klaus had once come to her in tears because he’d accidentally cut his doll’s hair unevenly, but that was a simple enough fix.

Play was good for children. She, who had entire textbooks on human development uploaded to her brain, would know. When they were worked too hard, they got stressed and easily frustrated. They stopped retaining new information. They started misbehaving. So, if they went off into a little daydream while they were supposed to be doing math, or if they started playing catch with a balled up napkin when her back was turned at breakfast, she let them. She was actually helping them meet Sir Reginald’s goals, in the grand scheme of things.

It wasn’t defiance. It was simply following her programming.

The children were eight years old, and Sir Reginald was at a scientific convention in Austria, and Diego, Klaus, and Ben were arguing in Ben’s room.

“You guys, come on,” Ben said in an uncharacteristically annoyed tone. “This is my game, and you said you’d play it my way—“

“Your way is b-boring,” Diego informed him.

“Your alien game is boring, but we still played it seven hundred times,” Ben shot back. “Now it’s _my_ turn, for _my_ game, the way _I_ want to play it. You promised.”

There was a long sigh. “Fine.”

Grace was distributing clean laundry, and the children were supposed to be reading their history lesson. She would give them a few minutes, she decided. She enjoyed listening to their pretend games. Little tiny humans were so creative.

“Okay,” said Ben, “I’ll go.” He cleared his throat and began speaking in an oddly inflected voice, one that she presumed was supposed to be that of a character he was playing as. “Jiggly’s birthday is tomorrow! We have to get her party ready.”

“Leeeet’s get balloooons,” Klaus said in deep drawl that prompted a round of giggling. “And chocolate caaaaaake.”

“Okay!” Ben’s character agreed. “We just have to walk through Pumpernickel Forest—“

“And then this dragon guy c-comes in breathing fire, ROOOAR—“

“Diego, no!” Ben protested. “That doesn’t happen. He wouldn’t do that. Everyone is friends in this game, they don’t beat each other up.”

“It s-says ‘attack’ right here on the c-card,” said Diego, who sounded frustrated. “You’re s-supposed to m-m-make them fight.”

“Iii’m secretly a uuuunicorn,” Klaus drawled. “Uuuunicorns beeeeat dragons.”

There were simultaneous cries of “No, you’re not!” and “N-no, they don’t!”

“Yeeees.”

Grace knocked on the door, and heard the boys scrambling around inside.

“Now, what are you up to?” she asked once a flushed Ben had flung the door open. “It's time for your history lesson.”

“We were just… um…”

“Go back to your rooms,” she said, and gave Klaus and Diego each a gentle brush on the cheek as they filtered out.

“Sorry, Mom,” Ben mumbled when she turned back to face him.

She gave him her forgiving smile. “I’m going to put your clothes away. Keep reading your textbook.”

He sat at his desk and she made her way to the dresser. In the top drawer, under his last clean pair of underwear, were the cards he must have just been playing with. He probably had a better spot for them usually, but he’d been careless in his rush to hide them.

Grace examined them with some interest. They were like playing cards, but instead of suits and numbers, there were funny little cartoon characters printed on them.

“Where did these come from?” she asked.

Ben half jumped out of his seat, and his face turned pale when he saw her holding them.

“Oh, I… Um… I found them after a mission,” he said. There was a pleading look in his eyes. “I… they were just on the ground, and there had been like a hundred people there, and they ran all over the place, so I just thought… it would be okay if I kept them? Because I didn’t know how to find the person who dropped them.”

After a pause, he added in a soft voice, “And their dad would probably just buy them more anyway.”

“Hmm.” Grace shuffled through the cards. She came to rest on one of a round, pink creature. It looked more worn than the others. “My, how cute.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, perking up. “That’s one of my favorites. They’re, um… well, they’re not all cute, but the cute ones are way better. But in the game—and there’s a TV show, too!—in the game, you catch them, and you train them to be stronger, and then they’re your friends. And, I don’t know. You have them fight, but you don’t _have_ to have them fight.”

He pressed his lips together and twitched them around in an effort to keep unwanted emotion from spilling forth. His mouth looked like a violin bow about to snap in two.

“I bet,” he said, staring solemnly at the card Grace held, “I bet people don’t make the really cute ones fight, if they don’t feel like fighting.”

Grace had the entirety of the Oxford English Dictionary at her command, and yet, her language center clicked and came to a whirring halt. She sensed that none of the billions of permutations of words she could string together were equal to the despair written across his sweet little face.

No matter—humans thought actions were better anyhow. They even had a saying about it.

She shuffled through the cards, and picked out one that she knew would be unpleasing to a human eye. One of the inferior not-cute creatures Ben had spoken of.

“I like this one,” she said, tapping him on the nose with it.

His eyes crossed trying to focus before he pulled her hand away to examine it.

“Him? Seriously?” He made the expression of someone who had tasted something very sour. “He’s kind of icky, Mom.”

“I like this one,” she reiterated.

Ben studied the card for a long moment. His gaze lowered to the floor.

“He’s okay, I guess,” he said, bashful.

Grace hummed and tapped the cards against the heel of her hand so that they formed a neat deck again. She held them out to him.

“Now, put these away, and work on your lesson.”

He blinked and took them from her cautiously. “I… can keep them? In my room? Dad always says no toys.”

Grace laughed her don’t-be-silly laugh. “Those are cards, dear.”

“Oh.” He grinned down at them, eyes sparkling with the joy of a shared secret. “Right.”

{}{}{}{}{}

“How come we never play any of _my_ games?” Klaus’s petulant voice echoed down the hall.

Grace had just switched the vacuum off to move to the next outlet. She took her time gathering the cord up so that she could listen.

“Your games are f-for girls. Ask Allison or Vanya.”

“Well, I made them up, and I’m a boy, so they’re not for girls. C’mon, you liked the pirate game! Let’s play that again.”

“Then you s-said we were princess pirates! That _r-ruined_ it.”

“Let’s play my game first,” Ben pleaded. “You can be the dragon again, Diego.”

“Can I breathe fire this time?”

There was a world-weary sigh. “Okay, fine, you can breathe fire a little, but not at any of our guys. Aaaand…  You can be the horse one, Klaus. She’s cool, right?”

There was a long pause.

“Al- _right_.”

“Okay,” Ben said happily. “I’m going to be this guy, and this time it’s the next day after the birthday party, and—“

There was a scoff, followed by the bouncing of bed springs.

“Why do you want to be him? That’s the w-worst one.”

“Well… He’s sort of cool.”

Grace wheeled the vacuum slowly down the corridor.

“No one l-likes that one,” Diego insisted.

“Mom does,” said Ben, a touch defensively.

“…Oh.”

“ _Anyway_. It’s the next day after the birthday party, and now everyone’s on a farm because they have to help pick the apples, so pretend my desk is the—“

Grace turned on the vacuum. Keeping the house tidy was very important, and Sir Reginald had programmed her with a cleaning schedule she needed to keep up with.

It was so loud that she couldn’t hear the boys talking, couldn’t tell if they were discussing their history lesson, or their economics textbook, or make-believe characters picking apples.

It was so loud that she couldn’t even hear herself humming. She only felt it vibrating in the metallic cage of her skull, a secret song that she alone would know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, the Umbrella Academy/Pokemon crossover episode nobody asked for! You're very welcome.
> 
> Which Pokemon do you think Ben called 'icky?' My logical mind wants to say it was Muk or Koffing, but my gut says Mr. Mime. The stuff of nightmares since '96.


	4. the best gesture of my brain is less than your eyelids' flutter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Being constantly pushed aside in favor of your more-talented siblings isn't fun. Grace understands better than Vanya realizes.
> 
> Also, WARNING: This chapter contains a reference to an adult making sexual overtures to a young child, and nobody responds to it appropriately. The kids are too young and sheltered to get it, and Grace only half gets it because she's a robot. Sir Reginald totally gets it, he just doesn't super care because he's the worst.

“Nail polish!” Allison held the tiny blue bottle aloft, her eyes sparkling brighter than the paint it contained. “Do you think Dad will let me keep it?”

“It’s a present,” Luther reasoned without looking up from the letter he was skimming. “It’s rude to throw away presents.”

Five rolled his eyes and threw a pink envelope decorated with hearts into the trashcan unread. Klaus eyed the nail polish with undisguised envy, the Hot Wheels he had been sent lying discarded on the sofa.

The children were nine years old, and Sir Reginald was in his private study yelling at someone over the phone, and it was Mail Day.

The children opened their fan mail every other Tuesday, and it fell to Grace to keep track of the return addresses so the senders could get their thank-you form letters. It was no small task. Luther was in the habit of tearing all of his mail into shreds in his enthusiasm to open it, and Ben, who received far less than everyone else, read and re-read his letters so many times that it was often difficult to pry them away.

She fished Five’s love letter out of the trash and jotted down the relevant details.

Ben was sitting quietly and reading his single piece of fan mail for the third time, and Diego was hiding behind an armchair eating a Ring Pop.

Well, that’s what he might have been doing. The children were permitted to play with any gifts they’d been sent for the hour-long duration of Mail Time. Grace was not to allow the children to eat candy. If the gift _was_ candy, and she didn’t have the x-ray vision required to see them actually putting it into their mouths behind the chair, it was a zero-sum game.

“I wish I had long nails,” Allison commented as she dabbed the blue polish on her thumb. “Really long nails, like the ones movie stars have.”

The distant strains of Schubert’s _Serenade_ filtered through the sitting room.

“You can’t do stuff if your nails get too long,” Five informed her. “They get in your way.”

“How?” Allison asked. “What can’t you do, with long nails?”

“You can’t…” Five trailed off, scowling. “Lots of stuff. All kinds of stuff.”

“Yeah, but what stuff?” Allison pressed, sounding smug. “Tell me.”

He hesitated, then waved a hand in the direction of Vanya’s room. “Play the violin,” he said triumphantly.

“Cross-stitch,” Ben suggested.

“I can’t do either of those anyway.”

“I bet you’d be great at them, though,” Luther said. “If you tried.”

As if to punctuate his point, there was a terrible out-of-tune screech, and the music abruptly stopped. After a moment, it started up again, from the top.

Odd, Grace reflected as she copied down the contact details from one of Klaus’s letters. Vanya knew that piece perfectly.

Two weeks later, Five unwrapped a small model airplane to an off-tempo version of _Fur Elise_. Two weeks after that, Ben glowed with happiness at his three letters while Vanya slaughtered _Ode to Joy_ in the background. And two weeks after _that_ , Luther showed off a fan drawing of himself dressed as a Power Ranger, underscored by discordant wailing that didn’t seem based on any song at all.

Sir Reginald had gifted Grace with a beautifully complex algorithm for pattern detection, and much of the time, that made up for her lack of ‘mother’s intuition.’ She could tell when something was wrong. Often, she could even tell _what_ was wrong. But it gave her no clues on how to fix it, and so she was left to her own devices.

She sat at Pogo’s desk in front of the typewriter, studying the other children’s letters in the low lamplight.

_Your powers are the coolest…_

_It was so awesome how you…_

_I wish I was as pretty as you…_

_That time you rescued the Prime Minister was…_

_Don’t tell anybody I wrote this, but you seem so much nicer than the rest of…_

_Thank you for coming to my town and helping with…_

_You’re my FAVORITE…_

Effusive praise, then mentioning specific accomplishments. She could do that.

_Dear Vanya_ , she typed. _You play the violin very well. Your Schubert is impressive_.

She paused. Now would be the part where she wrote about her own life, but what was there to say? The children already knew everything worth knowing about her. Skip it then.

_Signed, Your Number One Fan._

After another glance at the letters, she added XOXOXO at the end. That was a common practice for female writers, it seemed.

Grace could move quietly, almost silently when she needed to, and Vanya didn’t wake up as she slipped into her room. She tucked the folded paper into her violin case. Force of habit made her whisper “Goodnight, sleep tight,” as she left the room, even though she wasn’t awake to hear it.

She sat on the bench in the hallway, and waited for dawn.

{}{}{}{}{}

“Lip gloss,” Allison breathed. She uncapped the tube and inhaled reverently. “It smells like vanilla!”

Klaus glared at the wrestling figurine he’d gotten.

Five slipped a package of Pixie Stix into his vest as smoothly as a nine-year-old could, and Luther and Ben were tittering over something Luther had been sent. A crisply cheerful Tchaikovsky song played deep in the bowels of the house.

“What do you have there, boys?” Grace asked.

Ben burst into a fresh round of giggles and buried his face in a cushion. Luther, barely containing his own bewildered smile, held up a Polaroid.

“Um… someone sent me a photo? Of… of their private par—“

Grace was on her feet and had the picture in hand before he could finish the sentence.

“Oh, my,” she said brightly. “It seems someone sent this by mistake! I’ll throw it away.”

And make a special note of it to Sir Reginald, not that anything would come of it. This wasn’t the first time the children had received such things. Sir Reginald would simply wave a hand and instruct her to get rid of the offending item, but Grace had a notion there was something deeply inappropriate about them.

“I w-w-wanna see!” Diego demanded, pulling on her wrist.

“No,” she said in her most firm tone. “I’ll throw it away. It was sent by mistake."

“Let me see too!” Klaus said, scrambling up over the back of the sofa. “Luther and Ben got to see it, it’s not fair!”

“No, children—“

The Tchaikovsky played on, undisturbed.

{}{}{}{}{}

She kept writing Vanya letters. She would place them in her violin case on Mail Day, and, if anything, her playing was better, more upbeat and lively, after getting one.

She usually wrote about her music, but she occasionally ventured into other territory.

_You have such lovely hair. You are very responsible about watering the plants in the foyer._

_You have wonderful manners. You always eat your vegetables without arguing._

_You keep your room very clean. Your math skills are getting better each month._

Always signed, _Your Number One Fan_.

Vanya never mentioned them, and one night, as Grace looked into the eyes of the portrait in the hallway, she wondered what she must think. If she truly viewed her as a fan, like the ones her brothers and sister had, or if she simply appreciated it as a kind gesture from her mother.

Nearly a year after the letters started, she got her answer.

It was right after listening to the news, and Grace was trying to shepherd everyone out of the study and into bed. Diego was stalling for time by telling her his stomach hurt, which was a nightly ritual by then.

“It really, really hurts, right here,” he insisted, gesturing at the opposite side from where he’d just indicated. “But I don’t need m-medicine, I just need to sit up. Not in my room, though.”

“My stomach hurts too,” Klaus jumped in eagerly. “I think it’s because I’m still hungry. For ice cream.”

While Grace was focused on them, Vanya approached Pogo, who was reading the paper in his favorite chair.

“Mistress Vanya?” Grace heard him say.

“I’m learning a new piece,” she said, in a whisper-soft voice. “It’s almost ready. Do you want to hear me play it? Tomorrow?”

“I would be delighted.” He leaned in and winked, like they were sharing a secret. “Shall I come by your room after breakfast?”

Vanya fairly skipped to bed.

{}{}{}{}{}

It was a Mozart piece, and Vanya was playing it beautifully. Grace had taken the laundry into the sitting room so that she could listen while she folded it. She’d never heard the song before—she must have practiced in secret, to make it a surprise. She’d done that once before, for Sir Reginald.

Once the song ended, she heard a low murmur of voices, too distant to make out. Vanya laughed.

Grace seized the laundry basket and the folded clothes and retreated downstairs with them. Pogo was so good with the children, so kind. He had an organic warmth to him that she lacked—it was wonderful that they had someone like him around.

So wonderful.

So fortunate.

She was so, so glad, for the children.

{}{}{}{}{}

_March 9 th, 2004_

_Dear Vanya,_

_I like the sound of your laugh. I wish you would laugh more often._

_Your music is progressing so much I can scarcely believe it. I remember when you could only play the first three notes of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and now you are a little star. You’re growing up so fast. Soon you’ll be touring the world with an orchestra, and we’ll all be sitting by the phone, hoping you remember to call home sometimes._

_I love you, and I’m proud of you. Remember that I’ll always be,_

_Your Number One Fan_

XOXOXO

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I hope no one was offended or personally upset by Luther's creepy fanmail. I imagine it's something that pops up for real-life child celebrities pretty often, although they hopefully have someone to shield them from it. I don't think Reginald shielded the Hargreeves from much of anything, which is part of the reason they all have such warped views of what's normal. Just one more way he failed them as a parent.
> 
> I have a few more chapters about ready to go, but I have to admit, I've gotten a little distracted by a new story I started. It's a Dave/Klaus AU, and I'm not sure yet if it's something post-worthy or just for fun, but I'm having a good time with it. I'm nowhere near done with this story, though, so there's still more to come!


	5. (an almost someone always who's noone)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robots don't panic, but Klaus makes Grace come pretty close sometimes.

Grace opened the washer, then the dryer, and then got on her tip-toes to peer into the small gap behind them.

Nothing.

She lowered herself back to a normal standing position. Her heels clicked primly on the floor.

Pogo hurried into the laundry room, out of breath. “Nothing in the shed,” he said, fiddling anxiously with the flashlight he carried. “Has Mistress Vanya thought of anywhere else to look?”

The children were nine years old, and Sir Reginald had just left with five of them for a mission in Tanzania, and Grace and Pogo were searching the Academy top to bottom because Klaus had gone missing.

When he hadn’t arrived to the foyer with the rest of the children after the alarm sounded, Sir Reginald had dispatched Luther to find him. Luther had come running back a short time later with a note, but no Klaus.

He’d gotten called to a better, more important mission, the note read. It was also a dangerous mission. He didn’t know when, or if, he would be home. There was no point in searching for him. His intended destination was Narnia, and if they’d all been a littler nicer, then maybe he would have taken them along, too.

Sir Reginald hadn’t batted an eye. If he was more given to plebeian gestures, in fact, he might have rolled them. He’d merely said that he trusted Grace and Pogo to handle things, and swept off to Tanzania.

An initial survey of all the closets in the house had turned up nothing, as had a search of every piece of furniture that resembled a wardrobe. They’d moved on to looking under beds, behind bookcases, beneath stairwells, inside cabinets, and finally, in desperation, had resorted to asking Vanya if she knew anywhere he might hide.

“She suggested the greenhouse,” said Grace. “I already looked there.”

Pogo rubbed at his prominent brow. “He’s left the grounds,” he muttered darkly. “He’s truly run off somewhere.”

He had been voicing that thought with increasing conviction over the past few hours. Grace, however, had run all the relevant data through her most elegant predictive analytics programs, and they had come back with the same conclusion each time: Klaus was still somewhere in the house.

If Allison or Five had left a note saying they were running away from home, Grace wouldn’t have doubted their sincerity for a second. But her sweet, silly Klaus craved an audience rather than an adventure, and this would be just his idea of a fantastic joke.

He was going to burst out of some overlooked hidey-hole at any moment now, pleased as punch by the chaos he had caused.

…Only, he never quite knew when a joke had gone too far, did he? Last week he’d eaten a potato raw to make his siblings laugh, and later he’d been surprised when he developed a terrible stomachache.

That was Klaus. He never thought of consequences until they were right on top of him.

Pogo began to pace. “We need to think,” he said, with renewed focus. “Where might he go?”

“Nowhere,” Grace told him helpfully.

Outside of missions, the children never left the property. Klaus wouldn’t know anyplace worth going, and he certainly wouldn’t have made his first foray into the wider world at night. Not when he was so frightened by the dark. He was still somewhere in the house.

…But, for argument’s sake, suppose he really had run off on some childish whim. Would he be able to find his way back? Would he remember their address or telephone number, if a concerned bystander or helpful policeman asked? Was he sitting alone and terrified on an unfamiliar curb as they stood there talking?

“I can’t imagine he’d go to the cemetery on his own,” Pogo said, more to himself than to her. “I recall Sir Reginald bringing them to the university once, but that was so many years—“

He stopped in his tracks and turned to Grace with a look of veiled horror.

“Grace, have the children found out about the zoo?”

She smiled. “They know what zoos are, of course.”

“Yes, but do they know there’s one nearby?”

“Oh. No.”

“Aah, thank _goodness_ ,” Pogo breathed, his face going slack with relief.

It was silly to think Klaus would climb into a wild animal’s enclosure. He understood that even cuddly-looking creatures could be dangerous, no matter how much he might long to hug a penguin.

He was far more likely to pick up a stray cat he found in an alley, not realizing that they, too, could be feral.

Or to get into a car with someone who told him they had a puppy…

But no. That was irrelevant. He was still somewhere in the house. Her simulations and data sets and finely calibrated logic were all telling her it was so.

Who was she to ask “But what if?” in the face of her own programming?

“Narnia,” Pogo mumbled, pacing once again. He pressed a hand to his forehead. “ _Narnia_. What was he thinking? Do you suppose the children use ‘Narnia’ as a nickname for a real place?”

“No.”

Pogo closed his eyes and gestured haplessly to Grace with both hands. As if saying “Here, _you_ try talking to her” to some invisible third person in the room.

“Surely the boy knows Narnia is fictional,” he murmured distractedly.

Grace thought of the last time she’d seen Klaus, at dinner. He had a shadow of a bruise over his left cheek—the result of a cartwheel gone awry—and he and Ben had been stealthily kicking each other under the table. His wild curls were getting to be too long again, and Grace had noted she would need to trim his hair sometime during the upcoming week.

He was still _somewhere_ in the house…

“We should call the police,” she told Pogo.

He blinked at her, startled.

“Grace,” he said, speaking slow and serious, “you seemed very certain Master Klaus is on the property.” He leaned closer, his gaze intense. “Have you thought of something else? Remembered something?”

“Oh, no!” Grace smiled at him. “He’s here. Perhaps he’s not here, though. We should call the police.”

Pogo studied her for a long, silent minute.

Klaus was still somewhere in the house. She knew it. She also knew that if they didn’t find him, that image of him with his bruised cheek and his too-long hair would be what she saw every time she closed her eyes from now until the day she was switched off for good.

Pogo dropped his gaze and let out a slow breath through his nose. “You know,” he said ruefully, “I don’t think alerting the authorities was quite what Sir Reginald had in mind when he told us to ‘handle things.’”

Grace hummed her agreement. “Shall I call, or will you?”

They passed through the kitchen on their way to the study. Vanya was there, rummaging through the refrigerator.

She hopped back a step when she saw them, looking guilty.

“Is everything alright, dear?”

“Um… yes.” She clutched the empty plate she held tight against her belly. “I came to get some more snacks. If I can have more. Please?”

While Pogo and Grace were searching for her errant brother, she had been set up in front of Pogo’s television with crackers and cheese and a Sunday night movie. A very special treat, and a very effective distraction.

“Of course, dear.” Grace crossed over to the cabinets and pulled down the box of crackers. “My, aren’t you hungry tonight! Did you have enough to eat at dinner?”

Vanya puckered her mouth in a rare show of temper. “ _Klaus_ ate all my snacks, I only got _one_.”

Grace froze. She heard Pogo take in a sharp breath behind her.

“What did you say?” Pogo asked.

“I…” Vanya glanced between them, holding the plate up like a shield. “Klaus is in the laboratory,” she confessed. “He—He was going to come out soon, he _was_ , but… but he told me not to tell you yet.”

In a very small voice, she added, “He wanted to wait until the movie was over.”

{}{}{}{}{}

He was sprawled out on a blanket on the laboratory floor, finishing the last of Vanya’s orange juice. Shoeless, shirtless, and without a care in the world.

“Klaus! There you are, dear!”

Grace wanted to hug him and kiss him and make him sit in her lap like the children had used to do when they were very small. The commands got jumbled and she ended up smiling at him softly, hands clasped in front of her.

“Oh! Hi, Mom!” His gaze shifted behind her. “And Pogo! You found me.”

“Master Klaus,” Pogo greeted him. His nostrils were flared and he was speaking very crisply, like he was afraid of what he might say if he didn’t keep himself in check. “I don’t suppose you would care to tell us where you’ve been?”

“Narnia!” he said cheekily. He sat up on his knees and grinned. “I decided to come back, because Narnia doesn’t have TV.”

“Tell me the truth.”

He heaved a dramatic sigh, no doubt annoyed Pogo was being such a spoilsport, but the smile lingered around his lips. “Well, first I was under my bed, but then I had to go to the bathroom. Then I went outside, but it was really, really dark and there were all these shadows…  and I wasn’t _scared_ , but I decided to go play with Luther’s airplanes instead. Then I went to the library, but it was boring. Then I tried to slide down the banister, but I almost fell off. Then I came here, but…”

He rolled his eyes at Vanya. She mouthed a pitiful ‘Sorry’ in return.

“I see,” Pogo said, still in that carefully controlled tone. “And what, might I ask, prompted this tomfoolery?”

Klaus’s eyes widened and a flush began creeping up his neck, the way it always did when he realized he’d gotten himself in trouble (again). “I… I just thought it would be funny?”

“You thought it would be funny,” Pogo repeated. He enunciated each syllable distinctly, and Klaus flinched like they were stones being pelted at him.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“Do you know,” Pogo asked, a tremor in his voice, “do you know how worried everyone was?”

Vanya made a little mewl of distress and moved to clutch the folds of Grace’s skirt.

Klaus looked up at him with a flicker of defiance in his eyes. “Not _that_ worried, I guess,” he said sourly. “Dad still took everybody on the stupid mission.”

The building anger in Pogo’s face drained away. He was left looking tired, and more than a little sad.

“If it makes you feel any better, Master Klaus,” he said gravely, “I believe that I, for one, have aged a decade in the past two hours.”

{}{}{}{}{}

The clock chimed midnight, and Grace left the hallway bench to check on the children for the fourth time.

It wasn’t truly necessary, but there was no harm in being vigilant.

Vanya was sleeping, hair spread out over her pillow. Grace wound a tendril around her finger for just a moment.

Klaus was lying on his back fiddling with his domino mask, which was progress. The other times she’d peeked in, he had pretended to be asleep, and had begun snoring exaggeratedly when she tried to speak to him.

That was alright. He liked to talk too much to hold out for long. She could be patient.

She took a step into the room, to test the waters.

“Are you having trouble falling asleep, dear?”

“I guess,” he muttered, without looking at her.

“Would you like me to read to you?”

That earned her a funny glance. It had been a long time since she’d read to any of the children. 402 nights, to be precise.

“It’s okay.” He frowned at his mask. “I’m going to be in a lot of trouble when Dad comes home, huh?”

Grace sat down next to him on the bed. “There’s no sense in worrying over it now, dear.”

He threw her a side-long look before returning his attention to the mask. “What did everybody say when they found the note I left?” he asked, trying and failing to make it sound like a casual question.

Grace hummed. “Oh, your brothers and sisters were all very concerned. Ben wanted to stay and help look for you.”

Klaus sighed and lowered his arms to his sides. His gaze trailed back and forth over a corner of the room, perhaps tracking the path of a person Grace was unable to see.

“I thought maybe they would all want to stay and look,” he admitted. “I thought maybe Dad would cancel the mission.”

Grace brushed a lock of hair out of his face. “Did you not want to go?” she asked, dropping her voice to a gentle murmur. “Is that why you hid?”

“I dunno,” he mumbled, leaning into her hand. “Sort of. Missions aren’t fun.” He darted a glance in her direction, as though to gauge her reaction. “I don’t even _do_ anything on them, most of the time. And then after, Dad always says stuff like “Excellent work, Number One.” “Too slow again, Number Six.” And he never says anything to me, and it’s like I’m not even _there_.”

He gripped her right wrist to keep her hand trapped against him, his expression stormy. She stroked her thumb feather-light across his bruised cheek, and watched the shadows play over his face.

“I should have pretended I was going somewhere real,” he said after a while. “Like a grocery store. Or Pluto.”

Grace smiled. “What would you do on Pluto, silly?”

“I dunno,” he said with a shrug. “Float around and look for aliens.”

His eyes suddenly shot wide. “Or no! You know where’s better than Pluto? You know where I’d go?”

“Where?”

He fixed her with a deadpan look. “ _Uranus_.”

Grace had never understood why the children found it so amusing that some words sounded like other words, but ‘Uranus’ was a perennial favorite of theirs.

She laughed, and Klaus broke out into a wide, goofy grin.

“I invented a magic trick while I was running away from home.” He swung the hand that was still captive in his grasp in a playful arc. His face was full of eagerness. “Do you wanna see it? You want to see, Mom?”

He should have been asleep hours ago. But there was no precedent for what she should do if one child, aside from Vanya, was left behind while the rest were on a mission.

And perhaps, she thought, Klaus would be less inclined to run off for real someday if he knew there was someone waiting at home, someone who would sit up late to laugh at his jokes and applaud his magic tricks. Someone who would wonder where he was, wonder if he was warm and safe and happy, for every second he was gone. Someone whose attention he didn’t need to work for, because he had always had it.

He could sleep in tomorrow.

Grace crossed her ankles and smiled. “Yes, dear. Show me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew, this chapter ended up being so long! 
> 
> I realized belatedly that April Fools' Day would have been the perfect time to post it, but oh well. I hope nobody had any terrible pranks pulled on them! One of my co-workers told everyone there was free pizza in the break room, but there was actually just a lady from HR who needed us to sign a paper saying we understood you're not allowed to vape in the bathrooms :/


	6. let's live suddenly without thinking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luther is so devoted to their father and his principles, but Grace doesn't see the harm in taking a day off sometimes.

“He’s not… here?” Luther asked in bewilderment.

“Who cares?” Allison flounced to her seat and took a vicious bite out of a strawberry. “Who _cares_? Not me.”

Five was shoveling pancakes into his mouth with grim determination. Vanya simply stared at hers, her mind drifting somewhere far away.

The children were ten years old, and Sir Reginald had flown to Paris for some mysterious emergency late last night, and they were taking the news that their father would not be home in time for Christmas very badly.

“Will he be home the day after?” asked Ben, worriedly twisting a napkin.

Pogo cleared his throat. “I don’t believe so, Master Ben.”

“The day after that, then?”

“…No. No, most likely not.”

“W-w-w…” Diego took an impatient breath and tried again. “Th-th-that’s n-n-n-n—“ He puffed in exasperation and crossed his arms tight over his chest, glaring mutinously at his breakfast.

“He won’t see us open our presents,” Luther told no one in particular.

Klaus looked up in alarm. “We still get to open them, though, right?” His eyes widened. “We don’t have to wait until _next year_ , right?”

Allison kicked at the bottom rung of her chair. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I don’t even want my presents. He can keep them. I don’t _care_.”

“You’ll all still receive your gifts, of course,” Pogo said in soothing tones. He made a half-hearted attempt at a smile. “I think there will be some nice surprises this year.”

The children were each to receive a watch and a copy of Charles Darwin’s _On the Origin of Species_. Grace anticipated their excitement would wane the moment the wrapping paper was off, as it did every year.

“He won’t get to open his presents, either,” said Luther.

“Nobody cares!” Allison spat. “Presents are pointless and Christmas is stupid. We should cancel it.”

Ben and Klaus exchanged an uneasy look.

“I still want my presents,” Klaus said in a hesitant tone.

Five scoffed and took another bite of his pancakes.

Grace set the bottle of syrup down on the table, and Luther looked up at her with glistening eyes.

“I made him a paperweight,” he whispered.

{}{}{}{}{}

Christmas Eve was generally a happy occasion. It was one of four ‘free’ days the children had, the others being Christmas proper, Birthday, and, for reasons known only to Sir Reginald, the 3rd of May. They didn’t have to study, or train, or listen to Nietzsche books on tape. They didn’t have to do anything productive at all if they didn’t want to, which, being children, they didn’t.

This year, though, they were…subdued. Nobody bolted from the table the moment breakfast was finished, bursting with excitement to begin a day without structure. Nobody tried to talk their way into getting holiday sweets a day early, or begged for a hint at what their gifts might be. There were no games of hide and seek being played, or forts being built, or arguments over whose turn it was to ride the bicycle.

Instead, Five went to read in the library, and Ben went to read in the sitting room. Allison went to her bedroom, slammed the door, and didn’t come back out. Diego practiced with his knives. Vanya practiced her violin. Klaus tried unsuccessfully to convince someone, anyone, to play with him, and Luther sat alone on a cold stone bench in the courtyard, looking glum.

Grace would be the first to admit that she didn’t understand Christmas. It was such an ephemeral thing, the spirit of a holiday—she’d heard, from various sources, that it was about family, or giving, or goodwill towards men, or eggnog and strings of lights.

The overall picture that painted was a bit confusing. But, while she might not have been clear on all the nuances, she knew there was nothing merry about seven children drifting sad and dreary around a quiet house.

Fortunately, she had a solution.

Pogo stumbled into the foyer shortly after one, with his arms full of bags and a thousand-yard stare.

“The traffic,” he muttered under his breath. “The _lines_.”

Grace gave her sympathetic smile. “Was the store very busy?”

He snorted mirthlessly and set the bags down on the floor. “You don’t know the half of it, Grace. I’m off to take a nap.”

“Will you call the children in fifteen minutes, please?” she asked. “Over the loudspeaker.”

He waved a tired hand in acknowledgement.

Grace gathered the bags and brought them to the kitchen, where the table was already covered in newspaper. She’d had to shoo a very confused Ben away half an hour earlier, but there was no helping it. Surprises were important at this time of year.

Pogo’s announcement came right on time, and the stampede of approaching footsteps came moments later. Grace prepared a smile.

“What’s going on?” Luther demanded as he burst into the kitchen. “Did Dad come…” He trailed off, taking in the sight before him in silent astonishment.

His siblings filtered in around him, looking on in similar confusion.

“What’s all this?”

It was a lot of things. There was glitter and beads and bottles of glue, ribbons and felt and string. Dozens of tiny jars of paint, dotting the table like out-of-season flowers.

“Craft supplies,” said Grace. “I thought we could make Christmas ornaments.”

“We never decorate for holidays.” Five eyed her warily. “Mom, we don’t even have a tree to put them on.”

“Well, we have lots of other plants, don’t we, dear?”

Klaus’s nose crinkled in a frown. “You mean, like, the potted ones? Next to the stairs?”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to decorate those,” Allison informed her.

Grace laughed. “Let’s get started!”

When no one came forward, she laughed again. “No need to be shy! Here, I’ll make the first one to show you.”

She cut a perfect square out of a piece of white felt and dabbed on some glue. After assessing her options, she selected a packet of googly eyes, and pressed one firmly to the center.

She held her creation aloft. “There, you see? It’s simple.”

Looking at the nonplussed faces staring back at her, Grace began to wonder if her housekeeping magazines had misled her. If making Christmas decorations was not, in fact, ‘a surefire way to spread some Christmas cheer to your kiddos.’

Then, a muffled giggle came from the back. When Vanya realized everyone was looking at her, her eyes widened and she shrugged in apology.

“It’s just a square.” There was still a tremor of laughter in her voice. “A square with an eyeball on it.”

“I like it,” said Diego, shooting her a dirty look.

“Yeah, Mom, it’s… really good,” Ben agreed, although he also sounded like he was trying not to laugh.

Grace beamed at him. “Thank you, dear. Do you all want to try?”

Klaus darted forward and snatched up the googly eyes. The rest followed at a more sedate pace.

“What are these for?” asked Five, tapping on the sheets of Styrofoam off to the side.

“You can draw shapes on them, and we can cut them out.”

Diego’s face lit up. “I c-can cut it!” he announced, pulling a knife seemingly out of thin air.

Grace took it gently from his hand as she walked behind him. “I’ll do that part, dear.”

“I want to make a cat, but I can’t draw a cat,” said Ben, examining the Styrofoam with a look of discontent.

Five picked a pen off the table. “I’ll draw you one.”

Allison leaned over to watch with her chin resting on her palm. “Can you draw me an angel next?”

Vanya was weaving red and gold ribbons together in a loose braid, and Diego had recovered from the disappointment of losing his knife to doodle randomly on a piece of felt. Klaus, who had smeared thick lines of glitter across each cheek like war paint, was humming as he glued googly eyes to the tips of his fingers.

Luther sat in his usual seat, to the right of the empty spot where Sir Reginald would be. He toyed absently with a jar of gray paint.

“Aren’t you going to make a decoration, dear?” Grace asked. “I can show you how again, if you like.”

“Hm? Oh, no, that’s okay, Mom.” He shrugged and offered a listless smile. “I don’t know what to make.”

“How about a snowman?”

“Last year Dad said we can’t sing the Frosty song anymore,” he pointed out. “I don’t think he likes snowmen.”

Grace wasn’t sure Sir Reginald had any particular opinion on the subject. What he’d objected to was Klaus singing the same Christmas carol twelve times a day for a week straight.

“A candy cane?”

“Not _candy_!” He sounded scandalized. “It’s so bad for you!”

That one Sir Reginald did have a very clear opinion on.

“Well, then perhaps think of something you like.”

Luther frowned down at the jar of paint, clasped in both hands like a tiny mug of tea. “I’d like if Dad came home,” he said in a soft voice.

Grace sat in Sir Reginald’s empty seat and rubbed a hand across his shoulders. “I know, dear,” she soothed. “But there are still plenty of things to be glad for, aren’t there? Your brothers and sisters are having fun. Why don’t you try to put those sad thoughts away, and enjoy yourself, too?”

Luther’s brows knit together. “You’re right,” he said reluctantly. “I’m the leader. I should have been cheering everyone up.”

Grace laughed and gave him a playful tug on the earlobe. “You don’t have to be the leader today, silly. It’s a holiday, remember? You can do whatever you like.”

He seemed to mull that over for a few minutes, watching Five sketch to Diego’s specifications, and Allison make Vanya a pipe cleaner tiara to match her own, and Ben assist Klaus in picking dried glue out of his hair.

“Okay.” He sounded cautiously optimistic, like someone making up their mind to try riding a bicycle for the first time. “I’ll make a decoration. Something I like.”

“Very good, dear.” Grace gave his arm a little squeeze, then left to stop Allison and Diego from fighting over a marker.

The afternoon passed in a cheerful whirl of glitter and ribbons, and the children would have continued until after dark if Grace hadn’t needed to prepare dinner.

“Look, Mom!” Diego proudly displayed his armful of Styrofoam weaponry. “I made a throwing star, and a b-broadsword, and a jousting lance. And a snowflake.”

“I made five cats,” Ben announced, “and then I made them all hats. Cat hats.”

Klaus did jazz hands, setting the googly eyes on his fingers to rattling. “I made _myself_ into an ornament!”

“Five didn’t make anything,” Allison said reprovingly.

Five let out a long-suffering sigh and grabbed a discarded piece of Styrofoam off the table. “I made this.”

“That’s trash,” Allison informed him.

“No. It’s a surprise.”

“What? It’s not a surprise if we all—“

He threw the Styrofoam at her, and it bounced off her forehead.

“Surprise,” he said smugly.

“No fighting, now. Shall we go decorate?”

The potted plants were not up to the task of supporting all of the children’s creations, so they branched out to other parts of the foyer. Allison placed her tiara atop the head of a marble statue, and Vanya wound her braided ribbons through the railings of the staircase.

Klaus struck a pose like a mime at the foot of the stairs and howled the lyrics to “Frosty the Snowman” in a display of Christmas-themed rebellion.

Grace watched the proceedings with a sense of satisfaction. This had gone rather well, hadn’t it? The house might be strewn with glitter, but the children were smiling again.

“Mom?”

Luther stood behind her. He held something out when she turned around.

It was a little robot made of felt, with pipe cleaner arms and a smile on its face.

“Oh, how lovely!”

He bounced on the balls of his feet, flushed with delight. “You like it?”

“Yes, dear, very much. My, how creative you are! Where should we hang it up?”

“It’s for you,” he said. “If you want it? You don’t have to keep it.”

Grace laughed and brushed a hand over his hair. “I’ll keep it,” she promised. “I think this is the nicest gift I’ve ever gotten. Thank you, dear.”

“It’s not _that_ good,” he demurred, squirming happily under her praise. “But you’re welcome.”

Allison called him over to give her a boost so she could reach the top of the doorframe, and Grace headed off to the kitchen. Dinner would be late if she didn’t hurry.

As she made her way downstairs, she glanced again at the little robot smiling up at her.

She smiled back, and slid it into her pocket.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote a Christmas chapter in April! I play by my own rules!
> 
> I also don't know why I thought Five was the sketch artist in the family, but I'm convinced he is. Allison can act, Vanya plays the violin, and Diego is a good dancer. Maybe the rest of the kids have their own hidden creative talents, too.


	7. listen: there's a hell of a good universe next door; let's go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Allison makes a good point. Grace makes a bold decision.

Grace balanced on her knees on the windowsill, humming. She didn’t have much of a sense of smell—it was hard to create artificially—but the tang of the vinegar and water solution was pleasant in her nostrils. Clean. Lively.

She wiped the newspaper down the glass in slow, careful strokes, and an ear-splitting scream pierced the air.

Through the open window, she watched as a young girl darted across the back lawn, her older brother in hot pursuit with a hose.

The children were ten years old, and Sir Reginald was on an extended trip to Beijing, and Pogo had permitted the landscaper to bring his children to work with him because he had yet to find other arrangements following their expulsion from the YMCA summer program.

Roger’s children were… spirited. Grace wasn’t certain any of the Hargreeves were even capable of that kind of volume, but she didn’t mind. They made her think of the way the birds would chirp after it rained, so glad the sun was out again they had no option but to give voice to their joy.

She observed Roger’s daughter sprint full-tilt and barefoot through the grass, long brown hair streaming out behind her. Like a little wild thing, she thought with a touch of appreciation.

The door banged open behind her, and if she’d been built to have a startle reflex, she may well have toppled out the window.

“What’s going on?” Luther demanded as he rushed into the room. “Who’s screaming?”

“MOM!” cried Diego, only a split second behind him. “Mom, are you ok-k-kay?”

Allison trotted in wearing a frown just as Five materialized by the bookcase, mask in hand.

Grace disembarked from the windowsill. “Everything is fine! No need to worry, children!”

Ben stood a step beyond the doorway, as though unsure whether or not he should enter the room. Klaus clung wide-eyed and terrified to the frame, and Vanya lingered in the hallway, a curious observer rather than a combatant.

“Someone was screaming,” Luther insisted.

Grace laughed and gestured to the window. “Mr. Sullivan’s children are working with him today. His daughter got just a bit overexcited.”

She cast a beaming smile around the study. “My, you all responded so quickly! Your father would be so pleased.”

Diego puffed up with pride, and Five rolled his eyes, idly twirling his mask between his fingers. Allison took an eager step forward, focused on another matter entirely.

“Mr. Sullivan’s kids are here?”

“Yes, dear.”

One of the children made a soft noise of surprise, and the pleasure on Diego’s face began to give way to uncertainty.

“Can we meet them?” She flashed a smile, but its sweetness was undercut by longing. “We always meet guests, don’t we? All those doctors  and newspaper people—“

“Journalists,” Five muttered.

She shot him a look that promised murder.

“We have to meet them,” she said with conviction. “It’s _polite_.”

The children met who Sir Reginald wanted them to meet. People who been vetted and instructed beforehand on what they were allowed to say. He didn’t want them exposed to any bad influences or dangerous ideas, and Grace couldn’t permit them to come into contact with strangers without Sir Reginald’s approval.

Even if he’d been there to give it, there would have been no point in asking. A trio of children deemed too uncivilized for the YMCA would never have made his rarefied list. Their father hadn’t, and Roger had been a trusted contractor for years.

“I’m afraid not, dear.”

Allison stomped a tempestuous foot on the carpet. “It’s not fair! Nothing bad will happen! They’re just kids, and they’re right here, and—“

“They’re punching each other,” observed Five.

He had zapped himself over by the window and stood watching the activity in the backyard with his arms clasped behind his back. The lord of the manor, in miniature.

Luther jogged over with a frown. “Shouldn’t we stop them?”

“I’d rather watch,” Five said contentedly.

Allison ran to join them, hoisting herself up onto the sill to get a better view of Roger’s sons.

“They’re not going to hit their sister, are they?” she asked in concern.

“Aw, I hope not,” said Ben. He and Klaus and Vanya had congregated at the other window, fingers pressing to the glass Grace had just cleaned. “She’s so much littler than them.”

All of the children suddenly reared back with a chorus of “Ooh!”

“She kicks so _hard_ ,” Luther marveled.

“This is s-stupid,” complained Diego. He stood a few steps behind Five with his arms crossed over his chest. “They look s-stupid. I’m going to the exercise room.”

Allison waved a hand in dismissal. “Bye, Diego.”

“I mean it,” he insisted, though he was watching intently as Roger’s younger son took a flying leap at his older brother. “Their f-fighting form is really bad, and their clothes don’t even match.”

Allison huffed in frustration. “Normal people don’t wear matching outfits, you dummy,” she said impatiently.

“Don’t call your brother names,” Grace reminded her.

“Right, sorry,” she mumbled, her mind clearly occupied by something far more interesting than her manners.

She leaned her head against the window frame and gave a wistful sigh. “I like her shorts,” she said. “I wish I had shorts like that.”

“I wish I had any kind of pants,” said Vanya.

“Trade you,” Klaus offered.

Ben gasped and bumped his nose up against the glass. “Look!” he said, pointing at something to the far left of the yard. “Look, their Dad’s coming!”

Allison clapped a hand across her mouth and Vanya let out a dismayed squeak.

“They’re going to get into so much trouble,” said Five. He sounded pleased.

Grace spied Roger Sullivan’s tall, slender form loping across the lawn. He stopped a few feet short of his brawling offspring and gestured to the flowerbeds.

He was too far away to be heard in the house, but his posture was relaxed. There was nothing to suggest he was angry, and nothing to suggest his children were afraid.

“That’s it?” Luther asked as the Sullivan children helped each other up and dispersed across the yard. “They’re not being punished?”

“He doesn’t even look mad,” Ben said in awe.

The oldest boy—his birthday was just two months behind the Hargreeves’, Grace recalled his father once mentioning—glanced up, and saw the children watching him.

He waved.

Diego uttered a cry of alarm and darted out of sight, while Ben took a wary step backwards. Klaus ducked. Vanya froze. Luther shifted his weight around awkwardly and glanced at Grace as though hoping for a cue, and Five stared back at the boy, chin up and gaze impassive.

Allison leaned further out the window and shouted, “Hi!”

“Allison!” Diego hissed as Luther pulled her down from the ledge.

“I can’t believe you did that!” Klaus laughed, his voice thick with glee.

“What?” she demanded. “I was just saying hello, it’s not a crime.” She threw an uneasy look at Grace, as if to double-check.

Diego began furiously expounding on all of the reasons why the Sullivan children were dumb, and not to be acknowledged, and, okay, the younger boy’s shirt was sort of cool, but—

In all the excitement, Grace didn’t think any of them had heard the faint “Hello!” that floated in on the breeze.

{}{}{}{}{}

Later that day, as Grace was heading to clean the windows in the upstairs bathrooms, she overheard something in Allison’s bedroom that made her pause.

“My name’s Allison Hargreeves,” she was saying. “What’s yours?”

She couldn’t possibly have smuggled one of the Sullivans indoors and into her room without anyone noticing. There was no chance.

“So, do you like working with your father?”

She hadn’t heard anyone else speak. Was something wrong with her hearing?

“Yeah, we work with our father, too,” Allison said in a conspiculously casual tone. “We’re called the Umbrella Academy. We’re kind of famous.”

There was a sigh, and a mumbled, “No, no, that’s dumb.”

She took a deep breath and started over. “We work with our father, too. We fight crime and stuff. Maybe you’ve seen us on the news.”

…Oh. Well. At least there wasn’t anything she’d be obliged to report to Sir Reginald.

Grace continued on to the bathroom.

As she cleaned the windows, she thought back to the earlier scene in the study. “ _It’s not fair_ ,” Allison had said, and, of course, she was correct.

It wasn’t fair that they didn’t have friends or choose their clothing. It wasn’t fair that the Sullivan children got to run barefoot in the sunshine on a beautiful summer day, while Grace’s own children could only watch from a hundred yards away like unseen wraiths.

It wasn’t fair that the thing Allison wanted most was the outside world, or that Grace could never give it to her.

How could she? Her own world ended at the sidewalk.

She watched the greying water trickle down the pane of glass, and didn’t wipe it away before it dripped to the floor.

{}{}{}{}{}

She heard the heavy work boots before the knock at the back door.

She opened it, and Roger Sullivan held out that week’s bill.

“Guess that’s it for the day, Ms. H.”

“Thank you.” She took the paper from him. “Would you like something to drink?”

He shook his head. “Raincheck? I gotta get a move on.”

They had had this exact exchange every Wednesday for the past four years. He was a very dependable sort of person, Roger.

“Thanks for letting me bring the troops today,” he said, slouched against the doorframe. “Pass it along to Doc Pogo for me? I don’t know what I would have did with ‘em otherwise.”

Grace studied him, backlit as he was by the orange glow of the summer evening.

“Where will the children go next week?”

“Oh, my sister’s place. She’s on vacation right now, but she’ll be back Friday.” He grinned. “Then they’ll be her problem every day ‘til school starts.”

Grace laughed. “Sir Reginald is abroad,” she informed him. “We don’t expect him home until August.”

He let out a low whistle. “Long trip, huh?”

“Yes.” She slipped the bill into her apron pocket. “It must be nice having your children come to work with you,” she said. “It must be nice to spend extra time with them.”

“Well, here and there.” He rolled his eyes good-naturedly. “They’re not exactly star employees, but there’s never a dull moment.”

“It must be nice to spend extra time with them,” Grace repeated. “Once a week, perhaps.”

Roger tilted his head and peered down at her curiously. Grace kept a placid smile on her face.

“We don’t expect Sir Reginald home until August.”

{}{}{}{}{}

“I like her headband,” Klaus mused. He was sitting by the window with his chin in his hands. “Do you think Dad would get me a headband like that for our birthday, if I asked?”

Ben shot him a look full of sympathy. “No.”

The clock chimed twelve, and Grace rose from her seat. “Time for lunch!”

“Can we eat in here?” asked Diego. Roger’s younger son was dancing with a rake, and he was riveted.

“No, dear. You can continue your lessons in here once you finish eating.”

There was a groan, but the children began to get up and close their books.

Luther crossed the room to Allison, who hadn’t moved from her spot next to the open window. “Come on,” he said, tugging her wrist. “Lunch.”

Her eyes sparkled with mischief. “Just a sec.”

She whirled around and stuck her head outside. “HEY!” she bellowed across the yard. “HEY! My brother likes your headband!”

Her siblings began to protest, as they did every week, but Allison simply dashed out the door.

The distant “Thanks!” was lost to her laughter echoing down the hall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...And now you know why the 'OC' tag is there!
> 
> I know that the kids did have some contact with the wider world, but making public appearances isn't quite the same as having normal, one-on-one interactions with other children. Let us not forget that in the bank robbery scene, Diego said "Guns are for sissies! Real men use knives!" These are not the words of a person who has ever experienced the mockery of other pre-teens.


	8. sun moon stars rain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Five plays puppet master, and Grace is perfectly willing to negotiate with terrorists.

Five scowled down at them all, his expression thunderous.

“I am trying,” he said in clipped tones, “to learn how the laws of physics apply to someone with my powers. If I do a spatial jump in mid-air, am I still an object in motion? Do I return to a resting state? If I can understand my relative physical position in the universe at any given time, I’ll understand my abilities better, and therefore myself.”

“Well-said, dear. I still can’t allow you to jump off the balcony.”

The children were eleven years old, and Sir Reginald was attending a state funeral in Washington D.C., and Five had seemingly decided to begin his teenage rebellion a few years early in his father’s absence.

On Monday, he had asked Grace to look over some equations he’d been working on. When she’d told him she could find no errors, he’d begun trying to convince her he was ready to time-travel. On Tuesday, he had recruited Diego to throw knives at him, in preparation for training to jump out of the path of a bullet. That very morning he had delivered an impassioned speech on why a minimum age to start driving was outdated and foolish, and now Grace had interrupted this little endeavor.

Sir Reginald wasn’t due home until Sunday evening. Grace had an inkling she was going to have her hands full for the rest of the week.

Five’s cold anger turned to peevishness and he crossed his arms over his chest. “Why _not_?”

“Because you might hurt yourself,” Grace explained patiently. “Now, come down. It’s time for dinner.”

“ _Fine_.” He pointed an accusing finger at Luther. “You’re a snitch. I’m not going to forget this.”

“I didn’t snitch!” Luther called up to him. “She caught me taking the mattress out here!”

He turned to his siblings, who had gathered in the courtyard to watch Five’s great leap through space.

“You’ll tell him, right?” he begged. “I didn’t snitch!”

“I don’t know,” Diego said as he rocked back on his heels. “That sounds like something a snitch would say.”

He was strong-willed, her Number Five. Clever, and driven, and argumentative. He knew his own mind, and considered it far superior to everyone else’s.

Still, Grace reflected as she ladled out the soup in the kitchen, he usually wasn’t quite so vocal about it.

Ben’s face lit up as she placed his bowl in front of him. “French onion!”

Allison cheered and a small smile crept across Vanya’s face.

The children loved French onion soup. They loved every food of which melted cheese was a key component.

Five took a sip of water and cast a cool look around the table. “Know what I’d rather have?” he asked casually.

“What?” asked Diego.

He turned his head and met Grace’s eyes. His own eyes glittered with menace. “Pizza.”

Luther swallowed his mouthful of soup. “You’ve never had pizza,” he said. “It might not even be that good.”

“Unlikely,” Five rebutted, as he polished his spoon on his napkin. “Pizza is consistently in Americans’ top five favorite foods in polls. They can’t all be wrong.”

“It looks good in pictures,” agreed Ben.

Five hummed and leaned back to look up at the ceiling. “Just think,” he said. “So much cheese. Mouthfuls of it.”

Klaus released a dreamy sigh and Diego gave his soup a critical look.

“Dad says stuff like that is bad for you,” Luther said, but there was a hint of doubt in his voice.

“Anything is fine in moderation,” Five assured him. “Ice cream is bad for you, but we still get to have it sometimes, don’t we?”

“You can put vegetables on pizza,” Vanya pointed out. “You don’t put vegetables on ice cream.”

Five shot her a quick smile.

“I… guess. Yeah.” Luther’s brow furrowed.

Five made a curious humming sound. “I wonder,” he remarked speculatively, “how many other kids have never had pizza. Not many, I bet.”

Allison gave a slow nod of agreement, a frown spreading across her face.

“Oh, well!” He shrugged with breezy disinterest and prepared to take a bite of his soup. “I guess we’ll never find out what we’re missing.”

The rest of the children cast uneasy glances around the table at one another.

Klaus, to the surprise of no one, was the first to break.

He clasped his hands together and swiveled in his chair to look at Grace. “Mom,” he said, with wide, pleading eyes, “Mooooom.”

“Can we try it, Mom?” asked Ben. “Just one time?”

Grace tittered as she loaded the last plate onto the serving tray. “You know how your father feels about nutrition, dear. And look! I have your dinner right here.”

“Tomorrow?” Diego suggested. “It can be instead of ice cream this month! We won’t tell Dad, we promise.” He directed the last part to Luther, whose face was already clouded by guilt.

“Yes! I’ll be sooo good if you let us have some!” Klaus wheedled. “I’ll never do another bad thing ever again, I swear.”

“Please, Mom?” asked Allison.                          

Grace looked at all the hopeful faces watching her with eager eyes and baited breath. Nobody’s arteries would clog after a single taste, but pizza was not on the approved foods list. Perhaps there was some healthier recipe she could use…

“I’ll have to think about it.”

Klaus groaned loudly and Ben’s shoulders slumped in defeat.

“But Mom,” Luther began, in the manner of someone who was about to deliver a very complex argument, “it isn’t _fair_.”

“Yeah,” Diego chimed in. His mouth was set in a tight frown. “Luther is right, for the first time ever.”

“At least he knows how to spell ‘Australia,’” said Allison.

“Children—“

Diego flushed. “That’s a HARD WORD, okay, and just b-because—“

Five fixed Grace with a level stare over the rim of his water glass, eyes shining with triumph.

{}{}{}{}{}

It quickly became apparent that Five’s goals were bigger than pizza. Every time Grace turned around, he was riling up one or another of his siblings, making some inflammatory comment, observing a new injustice. No sooner would she put out one fire than four more had sparked.

After dinner, he sat next to Klaus while they watched the news on the recently-purchased TV, and paid their sisters a series of effusive compliments during commercial breaks—he liked Allison’s nail polish, and the girls’ new shoes were awfully stylish, and oh, didn’t Vanya’s hair clips look nice?

“I don’t have anything pretty to wear!” Klaus wailed finally. “How am I ever going to find somebody to kiss me if I don’t have anything pretty? _This uniform is ruining my life_!”

While everyone was getting ready for bed, he strolled into Allison’s room, where she sat talking with Luther, and mentioned the local paper had done a profile on the Channel 9 weatherman.

“I saved it in case you wanted to read it,” he said. “You still want to marry him when you grow up, right?”

Luther turned to her sharply. “His hair is a wig!” he protested in dismay.

At breakfast the next morning, Five brought up the hot-button issue of catchphrases, which sent Diego spiraling into a sulk over the fact that everyone had teased him for telling a reporter their goal was to “keep the world knife and safe.”

“Every superhero has a catchphrase!” he ranted. “How will anybody take us seriously?”

During a group study session, he told Ben that he’d never agreed with Luther’s decision to tell their father about the stray cat that had taken up residence in the yard last spring.

“They keep away mice,” he said. “But I guess it’s probably better she went to an animal shelter. Cats usually get pregnant in the spring, you know.”

“Kittens,” Ben breathed, stricken. “We could have had _kittens_.”

Over lunch, he announced to the table at large that he found it a tad unfair that Pogo only ever stocked the kitchen with the types of juice he himself liked, and while Grace was supervising the children’s exercises, he mentioned how silly their jumpsuits looked in comparison to her beautifully tailored dress (“Nobody will ever kiss _any_ of us!” bawled Klaus).

No, this was not about pizza. This was about causing trouble, and it was working.

Five sat in the library, freshly showered after training and engrossed in a quantum mechanics textbook.

Grace lowered herself into the chair to his right. He didn’t look up, but his eyes stopped scanning the page.

“Five, dear,” she said, “is something bothering you?”

“No, Mother Dearest.” He twirled a pen lightly through his fingers. “Why do you ask?”

“You’ve been upsetting your siblings.”

“Really?” he drawled. He tilted his head and offered her a sly smile. “I’m just sharing my opinions. You know, like you shared your opinion that jumping off the balcony is too dangerous.”

Grace slid a hand across the table, but stopped short of touching him. He wasn’t snuggly like the other children. It would only make him bristle.

“It _is_ dangerous,” she said in a gentle voice. “I don’t want you to get hurt, dear.”

His face twisted in anger. Not simple childish pique, but something dark and seething.

“You know what,” he snapped, “I’m sick of this.”

He flung both hands up into the air. “’You’re not ready for that, Number Five.’ ‘That’s a waste of time, Number Five.’ ‘Stick to the lesson plan, Number Five.’ Well, guess what? Dad can’t tell us what to do every second of every day anymore, we’re not _babies_.”

He glared at her, as if daring her to argue.

Grace folded her hands and smiled. It was polite to listen without interrupting.

“My powers are mine.” His eyes smoldered. “They’re not Dad’s, they’re _mine_. I wanted to try things my way while he wasn’t here, but now _you_ won’t let me.”

He crossed his arms over his chest and slumped down in his seat. “This house is _bullshit_.”

Grace studied his moody face. She couldn’t fault him for being frustrated. He was so mature for his age, in many regards. So ambitious, so curious about his own abilities.

How might she feel, she wondered, if she was treated as though she was no more intelligent or capable than the refrigerator?

Sir Reginald had such high hopes for the children. All of this, the education and the training and the tests and the rules, were meant to elevate them, to make them superhuman in every way. And that was her prime directive as well, was it not? To help them grow into the people their father envisioned?

“Five, dear—“

“Save it.” His voice had lost that bitter edge and was now resigned. “I know what you’re going to say. ‘Your father is a wonderful man, a brilliant man! Industrialist! Inventor! Wi—‘”

“Actually,” Grace cut in smoothly, “I was going to suggest we compromise.”

A flower would die in a pot that was too small, and the roots of a cramped tree would turn destructive. That was the way of living things—in order to grow to their fullest potential, they needed space.

Five looked at her side-long, clearly suspicious. “…Continue.”

“Well,” she said, “I can’t allow you to jump off of the balcony. How about the kitchen counter?”

“That’s not high enough.” He sucked the inside of one cheek, studying her in appraisal. “The first floor window?”

“With a mattress at the bottom.”

He hesitated, then nodded. “Deal.”

“You mustn’t ask Diego to throw knives at you,” she went on.

“I was wearing the safety vest!”

“It doesn’t cover your entire body,” Grace said calmly. “And how do you suppose Diego would feel if he injured you?”

He looked away and gritted his jaw back and forth, thinking it over. “Fine,” he conceded. “What’s your suggestion?”

“Tennis balls.”

“That…!” He gave a begrudging sigh. “Okay. Yes. That’s… probably better.”

“Excellent! Now, you can’t start driving a car just yet. That would be illegal, you see.”

“Yeah. I kind of knew that one.” He leaned forward and folded his arms on the table, watching her closely. “Time-travel?”

“Your father doesn’t want you to try it yet. He would be very upset if you were to disobey him.”

His shoulders tensed and he opened his mouth to argue, but she wasn’t finished.

“I don’t want you to get hurt, dear.” She smiled brightly. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

He narrowed his eyes, but his expression was quizzical rather than angry.

After a long moment had passed in silence, he nodded.

“Fair enough.” He drew himself up, and with an air of formality that the other children would have only assumed in jest, offered her a hand. “I accept your terms. Truce.”

Grace took it, but before shaking had to clarify. “No more teasing your siblings, now.”

He gazed at her coolly, then gave her hand a firm shake.

“But,” he warned as they pulled away, “I will never stop making fun of Diego for ‘keeping the world knife and safe.’ He said that on _television_ , Mom.”

{}{}{}{}{}

“PIZZA!”

Klaus darted forward and flung his arms around her waist. The top of his head grazed her chin.

“Mom, Mom, Mom!” He squeezed her tightly. “MOOOOOM, I love you!”

“I love you, too, dear.” She gave him a gentle pat on the back. “But this isn’t pizza.”

Diego, who had approached the counter to examine that night’s dinner, smiled at her in confusion.

“What is it then? It looks like pizza.”

“The crust is made from cauliflower.” It was topped with peppers and onions and roasted tomatoes. “It’s a vegetable medley with cheese.”

“The cheese is all that matters,” Allison called from the table. “Sit down so we can eat!”

Five sidled by on his way back from getting ice cubes. He paused and leaned around Grace’s shoulder to watch her slice it.

“You know I didn’t actually care about this part, right?” he asked.

“Oh, but your siblings liked your suggestion ever so much!”

“Hm.” He took a sip of water, looking down at the not-pizza in distaste. “I hate cauliflower.”

“Too late now, dear.” She turned her head and smiled at him. “Your siblings liked your suggestion ever so much, you see.”

His mouth parted slightly. He quickly snapped it shut and continued to his seat with a mumbled “Whatever,” but not before Grace had caught the subtle upwards quirk of his lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another long chapter, but fun to write. I love the idea of Five being a spiteful little shit when he doesn't get his way (and Vanya co-signing just a bit, because Five's her fave. She's such a supportive sister!). One more chapter to go, and then on to new projects!


	9. who pays any attention to the syntax of things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ah, the things you do for love.

Grace snipped the stem off of the last carnation and wrapped the clippings up in the newspaper she’d laid out.

While she admired the flowers, the sitting room clock struck seven. Only thirty minutes to go.

Allison was the first to arrive, doing a slow twirl as she stepped through the door. Her dress flared out around her, deep purple with a rhinestone accent at the left hip. The gauzy outer shell floated lazily back into place when she came to a stop.

“Ta-daa!” she sang.

The children were twelve years old, and Sir Reginald was upstairs getting dressed, and they were about to head out to their very first party.

The children had attended other events, of course, awards ceremonies and the like. Sir Reginald had always deemed them too young to bring to the dinners and social gatherings afterwards, but he had decided that it was time they learned the finer points of etiquette.

A charity he donated to had invited the whole family to a fundraising gala, and he had elected to take them along for the cocktail and hors d’oeuvres segment of the evening.

Grace clapped her hands together. “Oh! Beautiful!”

“Thanks.” Allison tucked her hair behind her ear and smiled, uncharacteristically shy, but still brimming with happiness. “Dad hasn’t seen it yet.”

Sir Reginald had given the seamstress very specific guidelines on what to make. This dress flouted most of them. Grace suspected Allison had suggested some ideas of her own while having her measurements taken, but there was nothing to be done about it now.

“Well, you look lovely, dear. Are the shoes comfortable?”

“Yeah.” She frowned down at them for a moment. “I still wish I could have worn heels. We’re only going to be there for an hour and half, they wouldn’t damage my posture _that_ much.”

Five marched in next, closely followed by Vanya.

Vanya froze when she caught sight of her sister. “Oh! Allison! You look… amazing.”

She awkwardly crossed one arm over her torso and grabbed her elbow. Her own dress, a black satin slip with cream accents, was nowhere near as eye-catching as Allison’s, but it was well-suited for her delicate frame.

Five’s eyes roved over the purple gown with disinterest as he brushed past her to the sofa. “Yeah, Allison. Nothing says ‘class’ like rhinestones.”

She held her chin up. “Thank you,” she said coolly. “You both look great, too.”

“Oh, yes!” agreed Grace. “So gorgeous! So handsome! My, I hope Pogo remembered to buy film for the camera.”

“Are we taking pictures?” Diego had just arrived with Luther and Ben. “I don’t like these clothes. They’re like our uniforms, but more complicated.”

Ben held up his arms helplessly. The cuffs flapped open. “How are you supposed to button these with one hand?”

“Here, dear.” While she fixed him up, Luther and Diego examined the carnations.

“Do we really have to wear flowers?” asked Diego.

“Dad said we do.” Luther was already fitting one through the buttonhole of his lapel.

Diego took a step back to see how it looked. He seemed unimpressed. “Maybe if we all tell him we hate them, he’ll change his mind.”

“I don’t hate it.”

“It looks stupid.”

Luther glanced down at his chest with a frown. “I don’t look stupid.”

“Just throw it away when we get there,” suggested Five, flipping idly through a medical journal he’d found between the couch cushions.

“Or give it to Klaus,” Ben said. “He’s going to want them all, anyway.”

Right on cue, Klaus spun into the room and struck a pose against the doorframe. “Did someone say my name?”

He was wearing his bow tie, and his dress pants, and…

“Is that my training bra?” Vanya gasped.

Five sighed and turned another page.

Klaus craned his head down to check. “I don’t know. Is that what it is? Ha, I just thought you’d gotten a sexy shirt and hid it from Dad. I _love_ it, by the way.”

Her face was turning red. “Take it off, Klaus!”

“Oh, come ooon. Please? How is it fair that all the boys have to wear the exact same boring thing, and you and Allison…” He trailed off as he caught sight of the sparkle on Allison’s hip, his eyes going wide. “She gets _rhinestones_? I swear to God, I’m gonna burn this whole house down someday.”

“Aw, thank you!” Allison chirped, swishing her skirt and beaming.

“Klaus, do something useful and steal all these flowers.” Diego swept them off the table and strode over to him. “If Dad tries to make you give them back to us, just… I don’t know, cry or something. Make a big scene.”

“Like you even needed to ask,” muttered Five.

“Dad says we have to wear them,” insisted Luther, trying to snatch them back from Diego’s hand.

“Ugh, you are such a suck-up!”

“You’re going to get us in trouble!”

Vanya started sniffling.

“Wait, what’s wrong?” Klaus asked in alarm as Grace hurried over to comfort her. “Why are you crying?”

She opened her mouth, but all that came out was a choked wail.

“Well,” Five said snidely, “you went in her room, and stole her stuff, and now you’re showing us all her underwear. I think maaaybe she doesn’t like that?”

“It was pretty rude,” agreed Allison as she fluffed her hair in the reflection of one of the windows.

Klaus’s face crumpled. “I didn’t mean it like that!” He rushed to give Vanya a hug, but she pushed him away and backed up against the sofa. “Vanya, I didn’t! I just liked it, I wasn’t trying to—“

“Shh, Vanya, dear—“

Luther jogged after Diego, who had sprinted away holding the carnations out in a taunt. “We’ll all get in trouble, and you’ll be the only dumbass wearing a flower. How does that sound?”

“ _Bad_! Just put one on! Or give them back!”

Grace smoothed Vanya’s hair. “Boys,” she called. “Stop that. No fighting.”

Ben approached Klaus from behind and tugged at the bra. “She doesn’t want you to hug her,” he said. “Just take this off and say you’re sorry.”

“I _am_ sorry!” Klaus moaned. “It’s just really tight, and I can’t—Vanya, _please_ , stop crying!”

He lunged to embrace her once more, Ben stumbling after him. She moved further away until she was pressed against the end table behind the couch.

“We’re not fighting!” Diego protested, even as he darted out of Luther’s reach again. “He started it anyway.”

“No I didn’t!”

“Boys!”

Vanya clung harder to Grace’s waist, tears streaming freely now.

“Here, I’ll help you take it off!” Ben said with a touch of urgency. He began pulling the bra up from the back. “Put your arms over your head.”

“No, Ben, don’t—“

Grace was never sure which of them knocked the table over. It could have Ben and Klaus, staggering forward as they tried to wrestle Klaus out of girls’ undergarments. It could have been Diego or Luther, charging around the room and playing keep-away with flowers. It even could have been Vanya, taking just the tiniest step backwards.

Whatever the cause, the table fell, and the priceless Ming vase on top fell along with it. Ben and Klaus and Diego and Luther ended up sprawled on the floor, with Vanya teetering over them. Five lay flat on his belly, his hand grasping at the empty air over the shards of china.

“Oh. My. God.” Allison breathed.

Footsteps echoed sharp and swift down the hallway.

Five scrambled to his feet. “Luther!” he hissed. “Luther, give Klaus your jacket!”

“Button it all the way and stand behind me,” Diego ordered. “Maybe he won’t notice you don’t have a shirt on.”

Vanya scrubbed desperately at her face while Grace picked the ruined carnations from the floor.

“But _the vase_!” Ben whispered frantically. “What are we going to do about—“

The door swung open.

Grace smiled at Sir Reginald, but he took no notice. He examined the scene before him in silence, inscrutable eyes roaming over the boys standing in a half-circle around Klaus, Allison trying to melt into the curtains, Vanya pretending a lash was stuck in her reddened eye, Grace with her hands full of crushed flower petals.

They came to rest on the broken vase, and his nostrils flared almost imperceptibly.

“What,” he asked in a deathly calm voice, “has happened here?”

Grace clasped her hands in front of her and did her tittering laugh.

“My, how clumsy!”

She toed a shard of pottery out from under the sofa. “I’ll clean it up straight away, of course.”

His eyes locked onto hers.

“You did this?”

She smiled. “Well, I scarcely know what happened! One moment, the vase was on the table, and the next—“ She gestured at the mess on the floor and laughed again. “ _So_ clumsy!”

“I see.” His gaze swept the room again.

“We leave in fifteen minutes. Finish your preparations, and remember—you would do well to not disappoint me tonight.”

There was a chorus of mumbled “Yes, sir”s, and the children began to break free from whatever spell had been holding them all still.

Sir Reginald turned to Grace. “You,” he said. “Follow me.”

{}{}{}{}{}

Grace wasn’t capable of hate, but if she was, she thought she would hate being updated.

While Sir Reginald and the children were leaving for the party, Pogo had sat her down in the green velour armchair in his laboratory, and cut open the synthetic skin of her wrist to access her wiring. He’d warned her before he did it, as he did every time, even though they both knew it wouldn’t hurt.

The big computer had been switched on. It groaned slowly to life, a full wall of vacuum tubes and crystal diodes, the behemoth from which Grace had been birthed. And once the red cable had been connected to her wrist—tethering her to it like an umbilical cord—Pogo had looked at her shame-faced over his half-moon glasses, and told her he would see her in the morning.

Grace sat alone in the flickering, blue-tinted light of the computer. Her input functions remained intact—she could see the wall in front of her, could hear the faint humming behind her—but there would be no output until the process was complete.

She could not move. She could not speak. She could not think in the way that she usually did, her mind running along the course set by another machine’s motherboard.

She filtered through endless decision trees and dialog options. Her motor commands were reviewed. Against her will, she remembered countless hours of changing bedsheets and scrubbing dishes, remembered Allison singing a nursery rhyme at age five and Ben skinning his knee on March 3rd, 1997. She recalled the steps to make a hard-boiled egg.

Her internal clock ticked on faithfully, and so she knew it was 10:49 when the door creaked open on the other side of the laboratory.

“Mom?”

Diego. She listened to shoes squeak across the linoleum until he was in her line of sight.

He studied her still face, his eyes wide and growing wet.

“I don’t think she can see me,” he said in a trembling voice.

There was more squeaking, and then Luther and Allison appeared in front of her, both looking solemn.

“Maybe it’s like when a person’s in a coma.” Ben was standing somewhere off to her side, and he didn’t sound convinced by his own words. “Maybe she can hear us, but she can’t talk.”

Diego moaned and sank to his knees, wrapping his arms around her legs.

“I’m right here, Mom,” he said. “We’re all r-right here.”

“I still don’t understand why she did it,” Allison muttered, staring at her like she was in a trance. “Why did she lie?”

Luther tilted his head. “She didn’t lie, exactly,” he pointed out dubiously. “She said she didn’t know what happened.”

Five stepped to the left, where she could see him, and examined her with his hands in his pockets. “No,” he pronounced after a moment. “No, she knew what she was doing.”

“She thought we c-c-cared m-more about the st-stupid party than her,” Diego said in a thick, harsh voice. “W-we don’t s-s-say ‘thank you’ or tell her w-we love her enough, and n-now she’s g-g-going to be all d-different, and maybe she w-won’t even r-remember us—“

Five exhaled through his nose. “She’s obviously going to remember us,” he snapped. “Why would Dad erase that? And anyway, we thank her for things all the time, and we tell her we love her before bed every—“

He cut himself off and looked sharply away, color rising to his cheeks. “She’ll remember us,” he asserted in a gruff tone.

Diego squeezed her legs tighter.

Vanya took a hesitant step towards her, lingering at the periphery of Grace’s vision like a shadow. “Thanks, Mom,” she said tentatively. “The… the party was really nice.”

Diego grunted in disgust and turned his head in Vanya’s direction, but before he could speak, Klaus piped up.

“Yeah,” he agreed with forced cheer. “It was so fun! So… so much fun. Um... There was a guy there who had heard about the time we went on the president’s plane and I rubbed my butt on the window, and he thought it was really funny. And Dad was _so_ mad, but he couldn’t do anything about it because I wasn’t the one who brought it up.”

“I drank juice out of a champagne glass.” Allison’s voice sounded small and uncertain, nothing like the pretty girl in the pretty dress who had twirled around the sitting room earlier. “I told a waiter we were leaving before dessert, and he stole a piece of chocolate cake for me.”

“There was a guy in the bathroom who handed you towels,” Ben informed her. “Like, that was his whole job.”

“They had little pastries with crab and cheese in them. I ate six.” Luther grimaced. “They also had ones with mushrooms that looked the same, but then… mushrooms.”

Klaus made a gagging noise. “Ugh, I took one of those by accident, too. I spit it in a napkin and put it in some lady’s purse.”

He was standing behind her, so she couldn’t see his face, but she could hear the way his tone shifted to something sad and quiet.

“I guess I shouldn’t have done that. You would tell me I shouldn’t have done that.”

Vanya made a soft noise, and the room fell silent.

After several long moments, Diego lifted his head and looked at her with red eyes and a firmly set mouth.

“We’ll r-remind you about anything you f-forget,” he said, and it sounded like an oath. “We’ll r-remind you about everything you like, and all the stuff that happened when we were little.”

There were vague murmurings of assent, Five saying something about where her cross-stitch supplies were kept, and Ben promising to tell her the story about the time they made Christmas decorations together.

Diego reached out and clasped a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t be scared, Mom. Everything will be okay.”

{}{}{}{}{}

Grace hummed as she made breakfast the next morning. Soft-boiled eggs, whole wheat toast, black coffee for Sir Reginald, and orange juice for the children.

She could feel their eyes tracking her movements around the kitchen as she prepared the food, but their father’s presence ensured that everyone held their tongues.

She placed the last meal down in front of Vanya and stepped back with a smile. “Eat up now, children!”

Diego averted his gaze, his face bleak, and Ben mouthed “Thanks” at the table.

They ate in silence.

When he had finished, Sir Reginald set his knife and fork down neatly across his plate and rose from his chair.

“We will convene in the exercise room in ten minutes,” he announced. “Number Seven, you will begin your history lesson in the library.”

No one spoke as he left the kitchen, and the quiet began to feel oppressive. Grace started humming again.

She heard one of the children take in a shuddering breath behind her, and then a hand touched her elbow.

She turned to find Diego looking up at her from his chair.

“Do you feel okay, Mom?” he asked.

She smiled. “Of course, dear. Right as rain.”

“Oh.” His hand slid weakly down her arm. “That’s… good.”

For a moment, he looked so lost and dismayed that she wondered if she had said something wrong, but then his gaze turned focused and he leaned forward.

“We usually have fruit at breakfast.” His mouth twisted in what might have been an attempt at a smile. “It’s not a big deal or anything, but… just so you know.”

Grace did her don’t-be-silly laugh. “Well, of course I know, dear. You didn’t tell me what type to serve last night.”

Diego’s eyes widened and he sucked in a breath, while Luther leaned forward on his elbows.

“What do you mean?” he asked, peering at her in confusion.

“Oh, I can never choose which type of fruit we should have,” Grace told him. She beamed around the table. “There are so many options, you see.”

“Oh,” Diego breathed on a sigh of relief, so deep it could have come from his toes. “ _Oh_.”

Five was frowning at her and Ben and Vanya exchanged a worried glance.

“Did she forget what fruit is?” Luther muttered to Allison.

Diego wheezed out a shaky laugh. “Shut up, dumbass.” It had no real scorn behind it, and his eyes were bright.

Grace glanced at the clock. “Your father is waiting, children. Are you all finished eating?”

They began rising from their seats, and Klaus crammed an entire egg into his mouth.

“Are you sure you’re okay, Mom?” Ben questioned, looking hopefully from her to Diego.

“She’s fine,” Diego promised. “I’ll explain later, but everything is…” He left his thought unfinished in favor of pulling her into a hug.

He stepped back with a brilliant smile. “We’ll see you at lunch, Mom, okay?”            

“Yes, yes. Run along now, dears.”

Klaus flashed her a smile around a mouthful of egg and Vanya offered a quiet “Thank you for breakfast” as she drifted from the room.

Grace returned her attention to the dishes, humming yet again. Frothy white soap bubbles swirled around her wrists, illuminated by a little beam of sunlight that shone in through the window.

They were such sweet creatures, her children. So kind and so loving, and they only grew better by the year. She could hardly wait, sometimes, to see what wonderful men and women they would someday become.

Life might have been imperfect—the missions and the nightmares and the endless days of yearning for things beyond their reach—but _they_ would be perfect.

Happy, and free, and always, _always_ loved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's a wrap! Thank you to everyone for reading, and for commenting, and for leaving kudos. I hope you enjoyed my story as much as I enjoyed writing it!


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